


Anchor

by LadyFangs



Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Longing, Regret, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-01 13:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17868248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyFangs/pseuds/LadyFangs
Summary: He brought her low. Made her fight him, on his level.Never has she cried—but for him, she did. Never has she screamed, but at him, she did.And through it all, he’d said nothing. Absolutely nothing, even as she beat her fists against his chest until she was too tired and all she could do was sob, heavy, deep tears that soaked into his shirt, wet his chest, and he’d just held her until she quieted. Joe looked at her as if he were the injured party, with those soft, sweet sad eyes of his, and that wide mouth turned down, dimples showing, and said quietly…“I always tried to tell you, you were too good for me.”(This author is a glutton for tragic, doomed couples, unrequited love, and all the pain and heartache that comes with it).





	1. Anchor

**Anchor**

 

Maybe he finally gets it now. That she’s moved on from him.

But he doesn’t have to be such an ass about it. And sliding himself between her and her date at a bar is definitely not a good look. But Miller has never cared about appearances, situational or otherwise. She shouldn’t be surprised by what’s happening now.

He doesn’t even acknowledge her date, acts as if he’s not there, and Cobb, bless him, with a slight cough and a glance at her, excuses himself when she gives him a nod of, ‘it’s alright.’

“See you later, Muss. Miller,” Cobb says, trying to be the better man before walking off.  He hopes it worked with Muss. She deserves better than she’s gotten with that asshole, he thinks.

“So, tell me… What would a rich girl do to really piss daddy off…on Ceres?” Joe asks Octavia once they’re alone.  It comes out as a long, slow drawl as he looks at her, slipping a hand over hers, and really looks at her for the first time in a long time. They used to be partners. Friends…even more than that.

Not anymore.

That’s evidenced by the way she snatches her hand away as if his touch has burned her. The sting of rejection comes unexpectedly, as does the seething anger reflected in her normally soft brown eyes. He has to look away from the reflection there.

He recognizes the man, but does not like what he sees.

Eyes, tinged red, and slightly watery. The skin, hanging slightly loose, on his face. Cheeks sallow, somewhat pale, and his jaw in need of a good shave. Thick, dark tendrils of hair under his hat, hang limply across his forehead.

Her eyes say it all—everything she’s thinking at the moment.

 Pity.

It cuts him deeper than any knife.

“Good night, Miller!” It comes out as a hiss. Octavia suppresses the urge to slap him. They’ve always dealt in extremes. Nothing in-between. It’s no different now.

He knows what buttons to push to piss her off.

He also knows what buttons to push to turn her on. Her fingers tingle from where his long ones had been moments before.

She used to love those hands. Well-shaped and dexterous, skilled and soft. She does still love those hands, as she loves the man.

She sees recognition dawn on his face, as if he knows she feels sorry for him and loathes it.  Despite herself, Octavia tries to save what’s left of his pride.

Her former lover has gotten thin.

It’s been months since they’ve been as close as they are now.

She can smell him, the unique, licorice- like scent of whiskey and musk that made…makes… her want to climb him like a spider-monkey and draw her tongue along the length of his neck, his jaw.

The memories are alarmingly clear.

The decision to break up was hers.

He had not wanted it even though he’d told her many, many times that he was no good for her.  The first time, he’d whispered it, his breath warm against the side of her face after confessing over late night drinks and a very slow dance, that he desired her. She didn’t need words to know that though; she could feel it in the way his long arms snaked up her body to settle around her waist and pull her tight against his chest, something hard and long poking her.

“I’m no good for you.”

The first thing she heard him speak, in that deep rumble of his following the first time they were intimate, when he brought her so high she thought she could touch the stars, her ears and body still singing from the aftershocks of orgasm. She’d thought she was dreaming, his voice sounded so far away. And then, she was drifting, drifting…until sleep finally claimed her, wrapping her in a hug.

She should have taken him literally. But at the time, she thought he was being romantic. At one point she’d believed she could save him, could rescue Josephus Miller from his own darkness. She’d convinced herself she could be his light, be what he needed, until the truth was so evident she could no longer ignore it.

He brought her low.

Made her fight him, on his level.

Never has she cried—but for him, she did.

Never has she screamed, but at him, she did.

And through it all, he’d said nothing. Absolutely nothing, even as she beat her fists against his chest until she was too tired and all she could do was sob, heavy, deep tears that soaked into his shirt, wet his chest, and he’d just held her until she quieted.

Joe looked at her as if he were the injured party, with those soft, sweet sad eyes of his, and that wide mouth turned down, dimples showing, and said quietly…

“I always tried to tell you, you were too good for me.” Before brushing her damp hair out of her face and tilting her chin up to kiss her lightly.

The raw honesty mixed with the grief in his words broke her into a thousand pieces.

Octavia Muss refuses to remain shattered. She has worked hard to stitch herself back together. This time, she doesn’t scream. Nor cry.

She saves him his pride, the only thing he has left. She gets up to leave, but turns to face him.

“You need to eat something,” she says, placing a hand on his chest, feeling the bones. He really is getting too thin. But it’s not her job, not her place, to tell him how to live.

 “Take care of yourself.”

She knows he’s watching as she leaves.

But she’s learned you can’t save those who don’t want to save themselves.


	2. Lost Things

**Lost Things**

 

“Octavia Muss, reporting, sir.”

She’s arrived to the Captain’s office early. The department is largely empty, save for a few techs behind cubicles. She can see them working below through the glass walls of Shaddid’s upper floor quarters. Everything is clear and white and sparse, here. The woman herself, dressed in a dark suit, her hair hanging loosely about her shoulders. She barely looks up from her study of files before her on the desk. Octavia stands on the other side, quietly. For a moment, she wonders if Shaddid heard her.

“Muss,” the captain says, still not looking up. “Formerly of the Crimes Against Persons Division.” Her fingers skim the screen in front of her. Octavia’s open file. “Rapes. That’s a tough one. So, who’d you piss off to get busted down here?”

“Sir?”

Finally, Shaddid looks at her, smirking as she crosses her arms on her chest and takes a long look at Octavia Muss.

“Who’d you piss off? The only people who work this beat are those who have no choice. You obviously did. So, who’d you piss off, Detective?”

“My captain tried to grab my ass and I grabbed his balls and squeezed. Hard,” she says, returning Shaddid’s look with a straight stare of her own. The women ponder each other a moment, and Octavia wonders what the Captain is looking for. Shaddid snorts gently, a tinge of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth, and Muss returns it with a light smirk of her own.

“Well, I’m under orders to make it ‘difficult’ for you, but given your history, I doubt much of anything will rise to that,” the Captain says. “You’re on district patrol. Oh, and I’ve assigned you a partner. Detective Miller,” her neutral tone has changed and the name comes with a bit of bite to it, matched by a near-invisible grimace. Octavia catches it.

“You don’t like him?”

“He’s a belter,” Shaddid says, as if that says it all.

Not many of those in Star Helix. In fact, Octavia thinks on whether she’s come across other belters serving in the security forces. A belter policing belters. That can’t make him popular—not with his people, nor is colleagues.

“I can handle it,” she says.

“I’ve got no doubt,” Shaddid tells her, coming from around the desk and standing in front of one of the glass walls with a line of sight directly onto the operations floor. It’s filling up with more people now. The captain checks her watch, and, as if on cue, a dark figure walks in and leans up against the wall toward the back of the room, mores observing, separate from the rest of the detectives.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s keep intros short, and get you guys on the street.”

Octavia follows her out of the office and down the stairs. Seeing the approach, the rest of the squad gathers toward the middle of the room.

Shaddid makes the general announces, acknowledges Octavia but doesn’t reveal her story to the rest, and sends everyone on their way.

“Miller,” she calls once most have disbanded. He’s been there the whole time, still hanging back, but upon her call, walks forward, hands in the pockets of his long, slightly shabby knee-length coat, shoulders hunched forward. But what she notices, is that she can’t see his face, under the fedora on his head. Not until he’s standing directly before them does she even get a mere glimpse of his face. But can’t look long, because Shaddid is talking.

“Miller, meet your new partner, Octavia Muss. Show her the district” He quirks an eyebrow, but says nothing, lips drawn tight. Octavia notices him looking at her with an expression she can’t read, and stares at him right back. Finally, he nods in acquiescence, or annoyance, she thinks as he turns to leave.

Shaddid looks at her with a “well?” expression and she realizes that’s a cue to follow Miller out of the station.

They hit the crowded streets, and she has to walk faster just to keep up with his long, even strides.

“Miller!” She calls, getting pushed further behind as she tries to weave in and out of the crowd.

“Miller!” until all she can really make of him is the top of the hat, and his back. Shit. He’s heading toward the trains.

By the time she finally catches up to him, she’s flushed from the exertion and pissed at his nonchalant attitude.

“Oh. You made it,” he says, glancing down at her. She’s about to tell him where to shove it, but her protestations are silenced by the rushing sound of the approaching train. It vibrates the platform where they stand.

The doors open, Miller steps in and she follows. He takes a hold of a rail on the side wall, and she does the same.

“You don’t look like you’ve ever been lower than midtown,” he remarks, as the train lurches forward, pushing people into each other with the jerkiness of the start. Miller looks unfazed. “Let me guess. You got demoted, and I’m your punishment.”

By now, she’s fuming. And decides to let him know it.

“I don’t like it any more than you do. So we tolerate each other at work. And you can fuck off afterward. Deal?”

He snorts, but says nothing. After a 20-minute ride, and the rotation of passengers in and out, the train finally groans to the stop marking the district. The doors open, and Octavia has to stifle her gasp.

Miller was right. She’s never been lower than the midtown district, and it’s almost like stepping into a completely different world. Where the midtown level features open promenades and modified domes meant to mimic earth day and nights, and the seasons, the district is dark, lit only by neon signs of packed stores, and fires from pop-up vendors lining the streets. Everything feels dirtier, grittier here, and she realizes for the first time, how truly out-of-place Miller was at the station—his darkness like a stain on the white, walls and shining floors of Star Helix’s facilities. Here, though. He’s just one of the crowd, save for the hat, a signal of a type of otherness, she cannot fix.

Miller is obviously of them, but as they walk, her by his side, she begins to notice the stares directed at him.

Some clear out of the path as they go but others are bolder, whispering as they pass. When a belter approaches and deliberately bumps into Miller though, his reflections are swift—grabbing the man by the back of his shirt and spinning them out of the street and onto the sidewalk before lifting the man from his feet and jacking up against a wall. The man’s head hits with a dull thud.

“Dammit,” she hisses to herself, hand on her service weapon while threading her way through the crowded street toward her partner. She comes behind him and points her gun at the assailant.

“I got this,” Miller tells her, still holding on to the man, now uttering a string of insults in patois. The words make her heat with anger.

“Hey! You know attacking a Star Helix officer is punishable by---“

“Fyah fi yuh!”

“Back off, Muss,” Miller yells at her this time. Turning his head only slightly in her direction. People nearby are beginning to coalesce around them in a small crowd, drawn in by the curiosity of the belters at each other’s throats.

Noticing what’s happening around her, and aware of the ongoing hostilities in the belt, Muss lowers her weapon and allows Miller to handle it. He does, with a hard fist to the man’s gut, doubling him over, and another to the chin, making his head snap back. The man falls to the ground, and Miller puts his boot on his throat.

“Watch your step,” he says, before stepping over the prone body and strides off, flashing his badge to ward off any would-be defenders.

“Why’d you do that?” Muss asks, when they get further down the street.

“I grew up alone,” he tells her. “A friend once told me, you want to be the ass, or the boot. I chose to be the boot.”

They lapse into silence.  The rest of the shift is uneventful, and once they get back to the station to end the shift, he goes her way, and she goes hers, thinking about what Miller said.

**.**

.

She’s still not sure of him, even after six months of working together. He’s not exactly volunteered more information about himself. She’s not inquired, even though everyone at the station, it seems, has their own theory.

_“Traitor.”_

_“Sellout.”_

_“Heard he killed his parents.”_

_“Heard he killed his wife.”_

_“Didn’t know he had a wife.”_

_“Outcast.”_

_“Loner.”_

**_Welwalla…_ **

The rest of the detectives look at her with sympathy. Some, even pity.

“Hey, if he ever drops, I’d love to be your partner.” Usually said with a leer. She’s the only woman working the district at the moment. The department is mostly male.

That stops soon enough though, when Captain Shaddid, having overheard some of it, leaks some of the details of Octavia’s file, including the extensive medial report done on her former superior. The urologists details were…colorful. After that, no one offers to be her partner again.

They’re again down in the district. She’s acclimated to it quickly. The smells no longer accost her. Now, she can discern the scent of street food. Miller’s taken her to some of the best spots serving imitation chicken curry, and she’s taken to it like a fly to honey. One thing she gives him; the man knows his way around good food.

 “Where to, today?” She asks, as they stroll side-by-side. He’s slowed down a bit, for her, and she keeps her pace better these days with him. It’s been a long, uneventful shift, but she was late and skipped breakfast in order to be on time for shift. Her stomach isn’t amused though, and a very audible rumble emanating from her belly reflects her body’s protestations.

 Miller looks down at the top of Muss’s head and chuckles.

A laugh. She looks up at him surprised, and catches the smile. And the dimples. She didn’t know he had dimples. Despite herself, she laughs a bit too.

“I know a spot,” he says, turning down an alley. There are fewer people in it, and they can move more freely.  “But I got to make a stop first. Stay here a sec.”

She does, watching as a person steps out to meet Miller as he approaches. They’re too far away to hear what words are exchanged, but she sees the man reach into his pocket, pull out some currently and hand it to Miller. He pockets it, not bother counting, and they part.

Octavia blinks, too startled by what she thinks she just saw to speak when he comes back to her.

Ready?” He talks like nothing happened, and when they walk past the place where the exchange was made, she glances at it, and immediately recognize it for what it is. She’s busted numerous pimps, rescued little kids and women alike from it, and she turns on him in fury.

“You really are shit,” she snarls, pointing at the building. “Bribes, Miller? So it’s true what they say about you.”

If she expected any sort of reaction, she doesn’t get one. He brushes past her, and keeps walking, silently.

“I ought to report you!” She says.

Still nothing.

“Do you even realize what you’ve done? How could— “

Two little boys, no older than 12, tall and skinny, their shirts dirty, pants with holes, come running up to him, and to her surprise, he bends down to come face-to-face with them.

“Hey kids,” he says, voice lighter now, softer as he reaches into the pocket that he put the bribe money in, and pulls out the same stack of bills.

He speaks to the children, voice low, and they throw their arms around him and squeeze his neck tightly, before running off. Miller watches them go a moment, before standing up again.

“Still hungry?” He asks her, but not looking.

Mutely, she can only nod.

Later, over a lunch in a quiet little hole-in-the wall, he answers the questions she’s not answered, but now weigh on her mind.

“When I was young, it was just me and my friend. We scrapped together. Fought together. Stole to survive. You see how we belters live. Imagine what it’s like for those with no parents. These kids got no one. I’m no one. But I see myself in them.”

He’s so forthright, it makes her ache a bit. There’s no trace of self-pity in his voice. Only a certain type of matter-of-factness about it that makes her feel sad.

Their lives are so different. She’s got family. He has none. She grew up between Earth and the Medina level. He’s been under all his like. Octavia thinks she understands him a bit more.

.

.

He’s her partner. She’s his.

A year into this, and she knows he has her back, and she has his. She trusts Miller with her life. What she doesn’t yet know is whether she trusts him with her heart.

That part is…complicated.

It was a long night. They got off late, after a major break in a case they’d been working for months. The arrest was satisfying, and Miller had treated her to that rare smile of his, with dimples.

“Drinks. My treat.”

He upheld that promise, and they’d drunk. A lot.

The rest was…uncertain.

She remembers laughing, remembers him smirking, remembers draping her arms around his neck, his hands about her hips to steady her. They were on the Midtown level, just a few blocks from her flat, and he’d helped her stumble home.

Muss blames it on the alcohol.

How she’d looked at him, really looked at him, and noted the softness of his eyes, the wide, fullness of his mouth that made her want to just…

Did she kiss him first? Or did he make the first move?

All she knows is she woke up naked, and still hungover. Rolling over, she thumped into a body. That’s what woke her. When she opened her eyes, and realized her partner was next to her. And he was every bit as naked as she was.

They did not speak of it for weeks.

Or rather, Miller had tried, but she’d dismissed it.

“We should discuss it once, at least,” he’d said.

“Nothing to talk about. It was just once. And I was drunk. Shit happens.”

She’s the defensive one. He’s not.

Their colleagues give them wider berth, sensing the underlying tension between them.

Even Captain Shaddid notes it.

“Everything okay with you and Miller?” She asks on a day when Muss is in the office doing the paperwork Miller hates.

“It’s fine **,** ” she tells her boss.

“I met my husband on the job,” Shaddid says.

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“Not anymore. I lost my husband because of the job,” the captain says. “Just some advice. Woman to woman.”

Octavia decides, its high time she and Miller talked about it.

She ends up on his lap. Riding him.

They wind up in her bed, her leg draped across his, his arms pulling her close to his chest, her head tucked under his chin, her fingers playing with his chest hair as he gently kisses her forehead, and plays with her hair.

For some reason, it feels right. Feels perfect.

She doesn’t want it any other way.

.

.

Slowly, Octavia Muss begins to allow herself to dream. To consider the future. Possibilities, with a man she quietly thinks she’s in love with.

“I’m no good for you,” he’s told her, but it’s always said lovingly, and she thinks she understands why. Because he was an orphan as a child, an outcast as a man. Lonely and alone.

“I was married once,” he tells her one night when they’re at home. Her home. He’s always here, it seems like. So much so his smell has become a part of her space, and she loves it. It’s in all her fabrics. The couch, the bed the sheets, her clothes. She smells like him. He’s marked her as his.

He makes her want to be domesticated. Docile.

“What happened?”

“She got tired of my bullshit. And I don’t blame her at all for it.”

Again, the blunt assessment strikes a chord within her. Makes her heart ache.

“It takes two,” she tries, but he shakes his head.

“You’re too good for me,” he tells her, brushing her hair out her face and leaning in to kiss her. She loves his kisses. Passionate. Gentle. So much of him is hard, but his lovemaking is always sweet. Intense. He treats her as if she’s precious to him. As if he is a drowning man, and she’s his air.

“What do you think about?” He asks her. “What do you want from us? From me?”

So, she drops what remains of her guard and opens her heart, and tells him.

“I…can’t…” He says, not looking at her for the first time in their conversation. She doesn’t understand.

“But, we can be alright. I’m willing…”

“No, Tavi. I mean…” he shakes his head gently, as if struggling to find the right words before exhaling, long and deep. “I put my swimmers on ice,” he explains. “A long time ago. I don’t want any kid growing up like me. All I’d do is fuck ‘em up. Besides, this life, it’s no place for children. Beats them down. Steals their innocence. Their humanity.” In this, the lover disappears and the jaded, cynic emerges again.

It’s the first time he makes her cry. It will not be the last.

.

.

She requests a departmental transfer. Captain Shaddid doesn’t grant it, but she does assign Octavia a new partner. Miller gets one, too.

It puts distance between them. Absence makes the heart grow tougher. She drapes herself in the armor of work. Wraps the cloak of distance around her shoulders. She was good before him. She’ll be fine after him.

She accepts new dates.

She forces herself to smile and enjoy herself and have fun. But she never brings any of them home.

Some nights she wakes with a pillow between her legs, her body wet with sweat, thrumming on the edge, but the release, just out of reach because the man that triggers those is no longer within reach.

What she doesn’t know, is that alone, in his own flat, he suffers the same. But pride won’t let him apologize. Besides, he tried to warn her it would end like this.


	3. Regrets? I Have A Few

**Regrets, I Have A Few**

 

She has always been too good for him.

In the end, he fucked it all up. Story of his life, really. But this time, he cannot escape the mistake.

Because he sees her, each and every day.

He sees her when she doesn’t think he’s looking. But even when he’s caught, he never looks away.

.

.

“You need to stop drinking your meals. Eat something.”

These are the first, non-work-related words she’s spoken to him in six months.

“Let me start with you, Tavi.” Dark eyes harden at him as she purses those soft lips and glances away a moment. He notes the way she chews at her bottom lip—wanting to say something, but stopping herself, because it’s not the time, nor the place. They’re at the station.

Finally, she shakes her head, a few stray locks of wavy, dark hair bouncing around her face before facing him again and leaning in close, to hiss in his ear.

“You’ll _never_ change. I don’t even know why I still care when you so obviously don’t.”

She turns her back on him, and walks angrily away, grabbing her coat off the hook at heading out of the department suite. When he turns and looks out the window, he sees her walking quickly down the street.

She still cares.

He does too. But what he did, he knows it was for the best.

 He could never have given her what she wanted.

.

.

The husky, feminine laugh draws his attention down bar and he spots her, smiling and laughing.

 It’s the first time he’s heard that laugh, seen that smile in months. But it’s not him this time, that’s making it happen. And when he sees who she’s with, he’s unimpressed, and maybe, if he examined his own motives a little closer, he’d be able to say jealous. But he doesn’t scratch deeper than the surface.

The rest of the liquor is downed in one gulp and he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand before loping a long leg over the stool to get up and make his way over to her.

She looks up at his approach, and the smile and laughter die.

At the somber expression on Muss’s face, Detective Cobb glances over his shoulder, sees Miller standing there, looking down at them. “She’s off the clock,” he says, turning back to Octavia. But she gives a subtle shake of the head, and he knows it’s a lost cause.

Fuck.

He thought he was close. Thought maybe, this was his shot to show her something better than she’d been getting. He’s never understood the attraction. Why Miller, of all of them? When she was so far above him?

Five years he’s wanted her. Hell, every man and a few of the women in the station wanted her, but she was…occupied… And with _that_ asshole, of all people. Cobb doesn’t get it. But now, it’s abundantly clear, by the look that passes between Muss and Miller, that he will only ever be a sloppy, unsatisfactory second.

“See ya later, Muss,” he says, accepting the loss and getting up from his seat.

“Miller.”

Miller doesn’t even acknowledge him before taking his place next to Octavia as if he’s always owned it, and Cobb was just borrowing his seat.

As Cobb walks away, he looks at Octavia.

“So…you and…”

“What do you want, Miller?”

So it’s last names only. She looks so unhappy to see him and that displeasure gives him a kind of perverse joy.

He feels like fucking with her, for old time’s sake.

“Tell me… What would a rich girl do to really piss daddy off…on Ceres?” He smirks, seeing her eyes go wide then narrow at him, knowing he’s struck a nerve. It was always good when she was mad at him. Really, it was good even when she wasn’t, but there was a certain extra…something, when Tavi was pissed, that made him want to make love to her into the morning. So, he liked pissing her off, yet never long enough to stay angry. Eventually, she caught on to the game and played it with him.

Until it wasn’t a game anymore. Until their lovemaking devolved into sex, and sex became fucking—because she was always, always mad at him. Then the fucking turned to resentment and he knew it wouldn’t be too long until she’d finally had enough of him and his bullshit, and really, it was the way it had to be because when he made love to her, he’d found himself talking too much, sharing too much, revealing all his scars and bruises, and…

She draws back, cocks her head to the side, studying him a long moment, realizing immediately the game, and refusing to bite.

“Bang every space bucker she can find,” Tavi says with a straight face. “At least, that’s what I did.”

The implication is clear. He’s lost the privilege.

Miller gives her a rueful smile. Places his hand on hers, but she draws back as if burned, and he knows it’s the end of the conversation.

“That’s not exactly what I was getting at,” he tells her. But Tavi doesn’t want to listen anymore. He can’t blame her. He interrupted her date. She’s finally trying to move on and he’s stopping it because…

Because he really, really doesn’t want her to. Even though he can’t have her, it’s not like he wants someone else to have her, either.

She gets up to leave him, but stops, an expression coming across her face he can’t quite discern at the moment. Must be all the liquor.

“You need to eat something,” she says, the hardness in her face fading a bit. “You’re getting too thin.”

Then she goes, leaving him alone once more.

 

.

.

 

Long day. Filter failure. And for once, he’s feeling guilty. Guilty, that the system is rigged for him, but not for all the others. Guilty, because he knows that that could have been his fate. Guilty, because…

On the way up to his flat, he pauses on the first flight.  An old man, and a little girl with a humming bird. Except, it’s not. A drone, he knows. One of many placed on Ceres to mimic the animals on Earth. Meant for comfort. Normally, he ignores these things, unamused by the deception—failed attempts to lull the populace into believing they’re still human like the rest.

The humming bird pauses in his face, its wings quickening as it hovers, drawing his eyes downward to the two people on the sidewalk beneath him.

 

“Cute kid. How old?” He asks, noting the two, thick puffs on her head, the sweet innocence in her face. She’s not lost her trust. Her faith. The world will beat it out of her soon enough, but not now. There’s a sharp sting in his chest when he hears the old man’s reply.

“Two and a half. How about you. Any kids?”

Two and a half.

It nearly guts him.  

“Nah,” he says, hoisting himself up the stairs to his flat.  “I missed that boat.”

Later on he’s sitting on his balcony, drinking his dinner. Drinking away thoughts of Tavi. But there’s no use dwelling on what could have been.

He knows he did the right thing. Tavi is, and was always too good for him.

But why does it have to hurt so fucking bad?

.

.

He drinks to forget.

He drinks to ignore.

He drinks to avoid dreams.

His drink fails him this night.

 

“Rikki Tikki Tavi,” he murmurs against the delicate skin of her clavicle, at the base of her neck. She laughs softly.

“What does that even mean?”

“You mean, you’ve never heard the tale?” He asks, kissing lightly. It’s mid-afternoon. Both of them are off-duty at the moment, having discreetly coordinated their vacations, or stay-cations actually. His place, this time. Less visible. He never gets visitors.

  _Mi pensa gufadi_ he thinks to himself, admiring the soft, almost golden-like hue of her skin, glistening with a sheen of sweat from the culmination of their lovemaking moments before. Tavi radiates some inner-sort of joy he cannot figure at the moment, her dark hair fanned out across his pillows, not a stich of anything on and unabashed in her nakedness. She’s too relaxed to really notice, and completely unguarded in the moment.

He watches how she shudders as he skirts his fingers down her stomach, coming to settle his hands right under her navel, before deciding that’s the next place he wants to put his lips.

“Joe…”

She breathes, shuddering again at the touch.

For some reason, he’s drawn to this spot, moving down a bit on the bed, so he can kiss her belly.

“Rikki Tikki Tavi was a brave little mongoose,” he tells her, tickling the spot. “Didn’t back down from danger. Confronted the fight.”

“So, you’re calling me a mongoose,” Tavi says, her quiet laughter hitched a bit with another stroke of his fingers.

“I’m calling you brave,” he says. “You put up with my bullshit, why? I have no idea, but…”

He kisses her stomach again, whispering to her this time.

She stops breathing. Around them, everything goes quiet.

He traces a pattern on her stomach with his hands, feels her fingers slip over the side of his face, into his hair.

“What are you doing, Joe?”

What is he doing? Making wishes, marking dreams he knows better than to entertain.

“What do you want from me?” He asks her. “What do you want from us?” He resumes his kissing, feels something shift between them, and begins lighting a path of kisses up her body, flicking her nipples, taking her breasts into his mouth, making her moan as her legs part to give him entry.

Is it her? Is it him? The sounds they make blend together, the lines between them blur.

“Mi du amolof to,” he groans as he comes inside her, resting his head between her shoulder and her neck. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, her body welcoming him deeply. She holds him as if for dear life and he can feel her squeezing, wanting, wishing too.

Later, she tells him what she wants.

And it kills him to say he cannot give her that.

 He loves her too much to put such a thing on her.

.

.

Dreams are the manifestation of desires, things hoped for, yet unattainable.

Regrets?

Yeah. He has a more than a few.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm weighing whether to expand this story or just stop here. We shall see where the muse takes me. This little fic jumped to my mind following the first Octavia/Joe encounter at the bar when she is pissed at him.


End file.
